As I lay down on the bed, exactly ninety degrees to the L-shape of the wall, the same wall that came down to the door, which was half open, on the edge of the half-open door the half-wet bedsheets were hanging like loose, melting whipped cream. I lay in front of the wall of my desk. There were eight images removed from the wall, eight images of the women I admired. I took a sip of the tea, still warm. The single black slipper was on the floor. Single? Where was the other pair?
Oh, that lousy big beach bag. I remembered that day, arriving at the beach with one slipper in my bag, my feet sore on the hot sand. Then I thought about the story of the slipper, how I got it, how it came to be. I started to think about all the women with shoes my size who must have tried the slipper on in the shop. My eyes were comfortably heavy. I took another sip of that chamomile tea with a drop of honey. Every time I took a sip, the teaspoon still hanging in the tea would make a jingling sound. I knew I had to go to bed now, otherwise it would be too late. I hated being sleepless, because when it happened, it lasted for days. What I utterly disliked the most was the panic of hours going by so fast after midnight, and still not being calm enough to fall asleep, and every time I did, my feet keep jerking me awake.
Recently, my sleep has become a site of conversation. I’m literally negotiating, plotting, and arguing the story, the character, the specific moment I couldn’t figure out how to write. I find my answers in sleep, many ideas that arrive to me when I’m deep in my dreamtime. So why did I remove those images? It felt heavy to write under the gaze of those powerful, iconic women, as if I was measuring myself up against them, no longer a place of mere admiration and inspiration, but eight pairs of heavy eyes watching over my writing desk. I kept looking at the remains of the glue and the square shades on the wall, staring at them steadily until sleep met me halfway.